This park is named for Asa Lawrence Lovejoy, one of the first owners of the Portland townsite. He and Francis W. Pettygrove took part in the famous coin flip which decided whether the name of the new frontier town would be Portland or Boston. Pettygrove, from Portland, Maine won. Lovejoy was the director of Oregon's first telegraph company and was an active participant in railroad development in the Willamette Valley.

Lovejoy Fountain Park, along with Pettygrove Park, is in what was known in the 1960s as the 'urban renewal area.' The same coin that Mr. Lovejoy and Mr. Pettygrove used to determined whether our city would be called Portland or Boston was flipped to determine which park would be Lovejoy and which would be Pettygrove.

The Lovejoy Fountain was designed by Lawrence Halprin, the well-known San Franciscan architect. The concrete fountain was installed in 1966. "The fountain wonderfully captures the spirit of Oregon's streams. Pouring in a sheet over the lip of the upper pool, the water is whipped into a foaming cascade as it splashes down over an irregular series of stairsteps and then out again into a placid lower basin." (The Oregonian, 7/28/66)